


fighting for peace

by catchpenny



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchpenny/pseuds/catchpenny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was usually a bad idea to talk to Grantaire; Enjolras had measured him up the first time they met, and been disappointed, but Grantaire kept coming back, kept coming to meetings, became a seamless part of their friend group as it coalesced – so Enjolras kept giving him chances. Trying to talk to him. See what it was that made him keep coming. </p><p>That turned, almost seamlessly, into seeing what made him come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.”  
> ― George Carlin

It was usually a bad idea to talk to Grantaire; Enjolras had measured him up the first time they met, and been disappointed, but Grantaire kept coming back, kept coming to meetings, became a seamless part of their friend group as it coalesced – and so Enjolras kept giving him chances. Trying to talk to him. See what it was that made him keep coming.

Grantaire was skulking in the alley that ran behind the Corinthe, visible in the darkness only because of the glowing end of his cigarette. He’d been in an awful mood all evening, and a silent one. Grantaire usually liked the sound of his own voice too much for silence. Enjolras had barely noticed him at all, and hadn’t noticed when he’d left. Finding him in the alley was entirely coincidental – and, Enjolras thought briefly, providential.

“Need a light?” Grantaire asked. “Or a cig? I can give you a drag, if you want.”

“You know I don’t.”

“I keep hoping.” He exhaled showily. “You’re boring, cupcake.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“So what are you doing back here, then? Taken up bottle collecting? I think they give you a whole two cents for them – not that two cents is something you’re ever short of –”

“Maybe I wanted to talk to you.”

“I’d believe you came back here to meet your dealer before I believed that.”

“You were quiet tonight.”

“You noticed?”

“It was noticeable,” Enjolras said drily. He took a breath, and regretted it. The alleyway reeked; decay and garbage and ammonia, under the fresher scent of tobacco smoke. At least Grantaire wasn’t smoking up. He was mellower when he was high, but less lucid. The last time Enjolras had tried to talk with him in that state, Grantaire had merely stared dumbly at him, without paying real attention, and then blown foul scented smoke into his face and giggled when he reared back.

“You missed me! Admit it. You miss me when I actually shut up.”

“I can’t miss you if you never go away.” Enjolras frowned, and moved closer, leaning against the wall a few inches from Grantaire. “Like I said, I wanted to talk to you.”

“I ‘spose more unlikely things have happened – but like I said, I’d believe you were back here to meet a trick before I’d believe that.”

“You said dealer, a moment ago.”

“Did I?” Grantaire blew smoke into his face. “I was probably trying to spare your feelings. Your pure, unblemished, clean, unsullied feelings. Sensibilities. Whatever. I don’t have a fucking clue why. Let me tell you, dear leader, meeting your dealer in a dark backstreet is a very bad idea. Good way to get mugged and end up with nothing. Learn from my mistakes."

Enjolras tried to make out his expression in the darkness. “Did that really happen?”

“Don’t strain yourself to feel concern or anything.”

“ _Did_ it happen?”

“Have I told you how cute it is when you get all hall-monitor authoritarian?”

Enjolras said, in frustration, “Why do you do that? Why can’t we just have a conversation like normal people?"

“Because you don’t really want to have a conversation with me,” Grantaire said, sliding down the wall and bringing their shoulders into contact companionably enough. 

“Why else would I be here?”

“I don’t know.” Grantaire laughed, close enough that the echo of his breath was faintly warm against Enjolras’s neck, and stubbed out his cigarette out on the brick wall behind them. “I’ve made several suggestions already. It’s your turn.”

“I _wanted_ to talk to you. Past tense.”

“And yet – you’re still here. What can I do you for, pretty boy? Blow? Blow _job_?”

“Can’t you be serious?” Enjolras asked, knowing it was useless, knowing he should leave. Grantaire was drunk, and sullenly drunk, and whether there was any basis to _in vino veritas_ , he wasn’t going to get any real answers out of him tonight.

'Oh, I'm serious enough,” Grantaire said. He leaned over and breathed against Enjolras's neck with real deliberation this time. Too intimate, too close, warm and damp – probably fifty per cent whiskey fumes, Enjolras thought detachedly – and when it dissipated his neck felt colder than it had before. 

He shivered, shoulders rising protectively against the cold air. 

Grantaire said, “You liked that,” sounding surprised, and for a moment his face was so close to Enjolras’s throat that he could feel the heat from it, and waited for another hot gust over his pulse without attempting to shrug Grantaire away. “You _did_ ,” Grantaire said, like they were arguing about it, each word a small punctuated blast. “Jesus.”

“Don’t,” Enjolras said, jerking away too late.

“Don’t _even_ ,” Grantaire said, sounding somehow normal, sounding drunk and spoiling for an argument, and leaned forward further to mouth where he’d been breathing. It was a sudden too-visceral shock, and this time Enjolras made a sound when Grantaire pulled back and breathed on his wet skin, newly and absurdly sensitive.

“Yeah,” Grantaire said hoarsely, which was – this wasn't even a conversation. There was nothing to agree with. “Yeah?”

“Shut up,” Enjolras said, but didn’t move, and Grantaire didn't just mouth at him this time. He _licked_ him, that was his _tongue_ , and then he sucked on the line of Enjolras’s throat and it sent a bolt of something hot and shocking twisting through his stomach. He made another noise. It still wasn’t ‘Don’t’.

Grantaire sucked harder, and then he was pushing the neck of Enjolras's shirt down and biting little sucking kisses down from his jaw to his collarbone, and the warmth had spread, the sensitivity. It felt – it felt like Grantaire just discovered a new sense of his he’d never known he had before. 

How had he been unaware that his neck could do this? That his _body_ could do this? They were connected somehow, and they – it felt good, it was good, as long as Enjolras ignored the fact that it was Grantaire doing it to him, could pretend it was – some girl, perhaps. Enjolras didn't think about potential partners much. When he got himself off, it was brief and perfunctory, and he didn't fantasise often. With his eyes shut, this could be one of his fantasies, with the usual shapeless and nameless someone –

“Always wanted to do this," Grantaire breathed right by his ear, god, he was sucking his _ear_ now and it still felt amazing, unexpectedly fervent and irrevocably himself - 

Enjolras's eyes flew open. "No," he said, and summoned up the will at last to push Grantaire away. His throat tingled. He was hard in his jeans. 

Grantaire looked dazed. He shook his head a few times, like a dog shaking off water. His mouth looked red and wet, and Enjolras was pretty sure that thanks to it, he was going to have marks tomorrow –

He put a hand to his throat, to one of the sore-sweet spots where Grantaire had paid particular attention with teeth and tongue, and Grantaire’s eyes focused abruptly.

“Can I suck you off?” When Enjolras stared at him, he wet his mouth nervously. “You don’t have to – You can pretend it's someone else.” 

His voice had changed inflection midway and ended up somewhere strange. _Pretend it's someone else._

“That’s a bad idea," Enjolras managed, over the thump in his ears and unfamiliar throbbing in his groin, the unanticipated physical response that had been born so suddenly and unexpectedly in this surprising place, with this impossible person. It was a terrible idea, and the fact that it was coming from Grantaire, of all people, only underlined what a terrible idea it was.

“Really bad,” Grantaire agreed, watching him like he was looking for his answer in his face and hadn’t gotten it yet. There had always been something uncomfortable about the way Grantaire watched him. “But – it doesn't have to be a big deal. Just shut your eyes and let me take care of you. I really – fuck, _please_ let me suck you off.”

Enjolras swallowed, and closed his eyes.

He could hear Grantaire exhale unsteadily, and then for a long moment it seemed like nothing was going to happen. He could feel that strange present-absent awareness of someone standing as close to him as they could without touching, felt it all over, and then Grantaire's hands were on his fly. 

This was a terrible idea, Enjolras realised with absolutely clarity, and stopped thinking it as soon as Grantaire pushed his jeans past his hips and got his hand around his cock.

Maybe he owed Marius an apology for the way he'd treated him over Cosette – how could anyone think clearly when they felt like this? – but no, Marius would only argue that his heart had been thinking for him, not his dick, and if there was something that wasn't engaged in this, this _thing_ with Grantaire right now – 

Grantaire dropped to his knees and took his dick in his mouth. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Enjolras said, jolting, and Grantaire made a weird muffled noise; and it was muffled because he had Enjolras’s _dick_ in his _mouth_. That was surreal. Grantaire – _Grantaire_ – was on his knees in front of him, and it was – 

How could one define talent without a reasonable basis for comparison? Of course it was going to feel like the best thing that had ever happened to Enjolras. It wasn’t a fair evaluation. It was strange, and new, and beyond better than his hand; that was all Enjolras knew; that, and that Grantaire was breathing heavily through his nose at intervals that were probably practical but made it sound like he was so into it he kept having to pause and take a deep breath. 

The other sounds he made were wet and filthy, and the flat of his tongue pulsed alternately hard and soft against the underside of Enjolras’s cock. How did he know how to do that? _Meeting your dealer in a dark backstreet is a very bad idea,_ Enjolras remembered, and then shoved the thought away hard. 

“Come on,” Grantaire said, pulling away for a moment, rough and strange, “I appreciate that you’re like, gentlemanly and shit, but – _get_ into it, Enjolras,” which made no sense; how was Enjolras supposed to get _more_ into this?

Grantaire made a pleased noise when he cupped the back of his head, but he was still waiting for something. Enjolras ran his fingers through Grantaire’s hair until he was working them against the solid warm curve of his skull. It was coarse and curling and slightly damp with sweat, shorter than Enjolras had ever worn his own. 

“Okay, yeah,” Grantaire said as Enjolras rubbed circles into his hair, and whined when his thumb slipped free to kiss along his temple, “Yeah, _come on_ –” and then he was getting back into it, the more Enjolras – petted him; when Enjolras rubbed at the edge of his cheekbone and into the hinge of his jaw Grantaire shuddered and took him deeper, bore down somehow and took him all. 

Grantaire was _deep-throating_ him, Enjolras realised, drunk with the thought as though the whiskey in Grantaire’s blood and breath was infectious. He could feel Grantaire’s throat moving, and moved his hand down wonderingly.

He could feel the rapid dipping movement of notched cartilage under his fingers; felt the raw stubble, the softer skin by his pulse. This was as close as Enjolras had ever physically been to another person, Grantaire's nose grazing the skin of his belly and his breath warm, his mouth warm around him, his eyes shut so that all Enjolras could see was their screwed-shut lids and spiky, short dark lashes.

Grantaire's eyes opened. They looked at each other as Enjolras shuddered with the effort of controlling himself, a point of contact and stillness as his whole body seemed to urgently beat to a frantic rhythm his hips wanted to follow. He moved his hand up to cup the back of Grantaire’s neck instead, and Grantaire made an encouraging movement with his head, like if Enjolras wasn't going to do something he was going to just go ahead and do it himself. 

That was – “Oh, _fuck_ ,”, Enjolras said, some incoherent shapeless noise, and shuddered; shuddered again; this was the best thing he’d ever felt, and the worst thing he'd ever done, and tightened his hand around the warm bare back of Grantaire’s neck and – 

When he came, it was the peak of what he’d already been feeling, a wave gathering height before crashing to the shore, and it left him as abruptly as the sea pulled back to the horizon. His pulse was hammering in his ears, his knees were suddenly useless, and Grantaire let his cock pop out of his mouth with an obscene wet sound.

All Enjolras could think was _oh, that's why_ , that was why people did what they did and went to such stupid, ridiculous, unfathomable ends for such seemingly pointless ends. It had always seemed a mystery, an unobjective correlative when his own hand had satisfied him well enough.

There was a wet guttural noise close by. At first it was just white noise, and then it resolved into something that made sense, into the sound of Grantaire spitting his jizz out.

The heat and urgency gone, leaving him more rational than he wanted to be, Enjolras felt sick and selfish. He slid down the wall and leaned forward, taking a few shivering deep breaths.

Grantaire didn't look traumatised, even though his mouth was half-open and wet and there was a lucent trail of spit – Enjolras hoped it was spit – running from the corner of his stupidly red mouth. His whole face looked more than usually stupid, worse than Enjolras had seen him with his eyes red and a joint still in his hand, after losing a drinking game to Joly and Bossuet – and that was definitely because he'd never seen Grantaire on his knees single-minded and shoving his hand into his jeans before.

"What’re you doing?” he asked. Grantaire gave him a _what the hell do you think_ look, like Enjolras was the stupid one, and kept jacking himself with the hand still wet with semen and spittle. "I don't – that's _revolting_. Don't do that."

Grantaire groaned like he liked that, Enjolras telling him he was disgusting, and his shoulders seemed to hunch under his leather jacket. 

“That's my come,” Enjolras said, and that statement, too, definitely seemed to have a positive effect. “What kind of filthy – what kind of _deviant_ –”

Grantaire pulled at himself even rougher, groaned again. It was a deep sound, a sort of helpless, frustrated thing, and from the way he shuddered and his face went even stupider – his mouth still looked so used – Enjolras realised he was close, and then with another tortured noise he was there.

"Hair trigger," he said, a little breathless. "Pathetic."

"Whatever, like you took all that much longer," Grantaire said, and he was definitely breathless. His voice was rough; chewing-on-gravel rough, whiskey and unfiltered cigarettes rough. He should have been humiliated, but he didn’t sound like it. 

Enjolras suddenly wanted to smack the back of his head, which was a pretty normal impulse, the most familar one he’d had in the past fifteen minutes, and then Grantaire pulled his hand out of his jeans and wiped it clean on his thigh, a thick smear of come that was probably half Enjolras's. This time his horror was entirely genuine. "That's _disgusting_.”

Grantaire shrugged. “Gotta go somewhere.” 

“If you show up tomorrow in those jeans –”

“You'll throw me out? Not much difference from usual protocol, then. Maybe I want to show up with your mark on me, Apollo.”

“I will throw you out.”

“Like you wouldn't anyway.”

“Not – I wouldn’t,” Enjolras said, which was possibly the most invitation he'd ever extended to Grantaire. He couldn't stop looking at his mouth. The drying flag of white on his black thigh. “Just change.”

“They'll have to bury me in these jeans,” Grantaire said. He popped the button on his fly closed. It made Enjolras realise that his own was still open. He was leaning against a brick wall near the dumpster with his dick out and Grantaire's eyes on him. How had that happened? “Oh, the show's over?”

“There's no show,” Enjolras said, zipping. He straightened up, and Grantaire swayed towards him like he wanted to pick up where they'd left off. He smelled like old whiskey and new sweat and sex. “Go home,” he said deliberately, as cold and icy as he’d ever sounded. “Sleep it off.”

“No kiss?”

Enjolras hadn't thought about it. He thought about it now. Kissing Grantaire in this filthy place behind the Corinthe, with cigarette butts scattered around his feet and the taste of his own come on Grantaire's tongue – 

“Sleep it off, Grantaire,” he said. “If you show up tomorrow, be less objectionable. If that's possible."


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, I know we crossed the day-drinking Rubicon a long time ago,” Bossuet said, cutting through the discussion. “But it's eleven in the morning.”

“Fuck off,” Grantaire said, and gave him of his uncommon, uneven, brilliant smiles. “Let me go to hell in my own way.”

“R–”

“Oh, let him be,” Eponine said, unpleasant in a way that could be more unsettling that Grantaire's own particular bleakness. “If he won't accept help, he might as well drink himself to death as quickly as possible, and get it the fuck over with.”

Grantaire kissed his fingers to her, and then took another pull on his flask. This time, no one said anything. There was nothing to say.

They'd had a formal intervention, the previous year, when Grantaire began to slip from functional alcoholism to dysfunctional; there had been meetings and personal entreaties and one-on-one heart-to-hearts. Eponine had tried harder than anyone. Enjolras still didn't know what Grantaire had said or done to turn her from worry to aggressive lack of concern, because Eponine hadn't told, but whatever it was –

“Okay,” Feuilly says into the small and uncomfortable silence. “We got the fucked-up posters reprinted, so whoever's putting their hand up for that – they usually have the clean-up crew tearing shit down on Monday and Wednesday mornings, so if we hit them Wednesday night, that gives us a maximum of visibility.”

He was good at practicalities. Marius and Courfeyrac, who were good at, respectively, conveying earnestness and charming strangers, were in charge of dispensing flyers and performing outreach; Bossuet and Joly and Bahorel were supposed to be engaged in Operation Fuck Up while Enjolras spoke next week. There was no point delegating anything to Grantaire, who’d missed first the discussion and then the handing out of assignments.

Enjolras had been talking to Cosette when he came in late. He’d paused, and then continued before the pause was obvious, ignoring the sound Grantaire made when he blundered against a table, or the thump of him throwing himself down in his accustomed chair in his accustomed corner. He didn't look at Grantaire, but he was intensely aware of his presence. 

When he did venture a glance, Grantaire met his eyes with an undecipherable look. A little later, after the formal business was over but before anyone had mentioned leaving, he wandered over.

His shoulders were slouched in a particularly _fuck-off_ fashion inside his worn jacket, and there was a knit cap pulled down low over his curls. He was unshaven. He looked like the kind of delinquent that people crossed the street to avoid; the kind of man who should be sitting in a bus shelter staring into the distance as buses come and go, sitting outside some coffeeshop or fast-food place with a paper cup by his side and a hastily-scrawled sign saying something honest and off-putting like _GIVE ME SPARE CHANGE AND HELP ME GET WASTED_. Enjolras had seen Grantaire do just that, and they'd had a blazing fight about appropriating charity from the truly indigent that had lingered on for weeks after it was dropped, like a bad smell, a cigarette smoked indoors.

“Wow,” Grantaire said now, looking Enjolras up and down, from beaten-in boots to straight jeans to flannel shirt to the circular scarf wound around his neck, a matter of necessity rather than preference thanks to the red and purple marks he'd found on it in the bathroom mirror that morning. His eyes seemed to leave a faint residue on Enjolras’s skin right through his clothes, the slick silver of a snail's track. “You literally couldn't look any more like an alternative-indie stereotype, even if one of the Avett Brothers threw up on your shoes.”

“That's not fair,” Cosette said, peace-making, and then her sweetness went slightly spicy. “He could grow a beard. A handlebar moustache to rival Bahorel's.”

Eponine happened to passing that moment, and she gave a brief dark chuckle. She was bitter chocolate where Cosette was cinnamon sugar. “Don't be ridiculous, Barbie. Enjolras would have to be capable of growing facial hair first.”

Cosette looked after her, confused. Grantaire just pursed his lips. “Yeah, I'm going to have to allow it.” He tilted his head, and grinned at Enjolras, not particularly nicely. “Ken. Hairless, dickless wonder–”

“Fuck you,” Enjolras said, and Cosette stopped staring after Eponine to look between them, and then moved abruptly away. “What are you trying to do, get me to shove it down your throat again?”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Grantaire said, the word so barbed that Enjolras couldn't tell how much of that inflection was sarcasm, or seriousness, or irony encapuslating seriousness and presenting it anyway with a shrug.

He opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it. That was exactly what Grantaire wanted him to do. Enjolras hadn't meant to acknowledge the alleyway. He'd intended to put it into elapses, a moment of time that would seal itself over. He'd spent most of the meeting on edge, waiting for Grantaire to appear and hoping he wouldn't – he did that, sometimes, disappeared from their company for days or weeks like a hibernating bear, and then showed up again without a word. It had left him unprepared when Grantaire did make an appearance. His instincts were always too close to the surface when Grantaire was needling him, unfiltered anger and sharp words.

And, apparently, lust.

That wasn't a good thought to have. Grantaire's voice sounded barely a little rougher today, and his eyes were bloodshot. His mouth, however, was still red, and clever, and it curved into a smile that was half a sneer as Enjolras stared at it.

“Well?”

“I have to talk to Combeferre,” Enjolras said distantly, which meant _fuck off_ as clearly as Grantaire's shoulders did, and turned. He didn't speak to Grantaire again until the meeting had truly broken up, and in twos and threes the ABC began to leave, a slow and drawn-out process which was nevertheless an inexorable exodus as soon as one part of it had split from the whole, requiring that the rest follow it and complete themselves again elsewhere. 

Feuilly was almost the last to leave, and when he seemed disposed to wait for Enjolras and keep him company, Enjolras brushed him off with a brief smile.

“I'll be there soon,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Enjolras said, and then he was alone in the upstairs room of the Musain, surrounded by the flotsam of the ABC _en masse_ ; mugs and plates and cups, soiled napkins and full ashtrays. There was a little pile of badly-made paper planes which Joly, Bahorel and Bossuet had amused themselves making out of mis-printed flyers, sending them in occasionally successful dive-bombing strikes across the back room – “We but fulfil their destiny,” Bahorel said grandly; “from flyers to fliers,” – and more that ended up as kamikaze missions, caught out of the air and crumpled by a fist, or sacrificed to the flick of Grantaire's lighter.

He was so fucked. What had he even been _thinking_ , letting Grantaire –No. He hadn't let Grantaire do anything, even if that was how they'd both put it. Enjolras didn't lie to himself. He'd wanted Grantaire to do it, and he'd liked it; he'd twisted his hands in Grantaire's snarled dark hair and held his head in place and fucked his mouth, and now he couldn't look at him without seeing that knowledge written all over his face.

Grantaire brought out the worst in him. He always had, but this was a new and disturbing low, a black abyss that had suddenly split before him in the alleyway.

“Alone at last,” Grantaire said from the doorway, on cue, and stubbed out his cigarette on the frame like the asshole he was. At Enjolras's speaking look, he said “I left something behind,” and glanced perfunctorily around the room. “Or not. Whatever.”

“You're a terrible liar.”

“Good thing I didn't really bother trying, then,” Grantaire said, and came forward into the room. He stopped when Enjolras twitched, and came forward again when Enjolras deliberately relaxed, making himself lean back and fold his arms.

“I did forget something.”

“Oh?”

“You didn't kiss me last night. Don't you know shit about pop culture? It's hookers that don't kiss on the mouth, and you weren't paying me.”

“No, I was _letting_ you,” Enjolras said, with a sudden dark twist of want and meanness that made him feel sick and hot again. He didn’t lie to himself, but he’d lie to Grantaire. “You begged me.”

That made Grantaire pause. “I did.”

“Doesn't that embarrass you?”

“It does,” Grantaire said. “I don't really give a fuck, though, because you _did_ let me.”

“I wish I hadn't.”

“I don't give a fuck.” The sudden tension of his mouth said otherwise. Being Grantaire, he only moved further forward. “You were into it enough at the time.”

“ _Then_. Did you seriously come back because you thought I’d kiss you?” Enjolras said, and succeeded in sounding incredulous.

“I thought you might be more into it if I hadn’t just had your dick in my mouth,” Grantaire said, and smiled at whatever Enjolras’s face did in response to that. “Or maybe I just wanted to offer to suck your dick again. Who knows?”

"Don't - you can't say things like that."

"Because you might be tempted?" Grantaire leaned closer, and Enjolras needed to move away from him, or it was going to be the alley all over again. Grantaire kissed his cheek, and then his hand was there, sliding over Enjolras's hip and down to his crotch, cupping him firmly between the legs. "Mm. Yeah, I thought so."

“I,” Enjolras said, and stuttered to a stop when Grantaire squeezed experimentally and grinned at him. He ran his tongue over the edge of his front teeth. “I told you not to come back until you were less obnoxious. You didn't listen.”

“Objectionable, you said. Are you objecting to me offering to suck your dick? Because that's what I'm here to do.”

“I – _yes_.”

“Liar.”

Enjolras closed his eyes briefly. The pressure of fingers was diffused through the stiff denim, so the hand coaxing him into full arousal felt anonymous, impersonal. Almost automatic. He could smell the warm leather of Grantaire's jacket. He must have showered since last night. At the very least, he'd changed his jeans.

When he opened them, the argumentative thrust of Grantaire's chin had lowered, and he was looking at Enjolras like he could figure him out by studying him. 

“Is that what you like?” 

“What?”

“When you’re getting off,” Grantaire said. “Does it only work for you if there’s no one on the other end? Maybe if I sucked you off through a hole in the wall, that’d do it. Pyramus to Thisbe. Do you wank off in front of a mirror? I would, if I was you. Couldn’t see anything last night, but I bet you have a nice cock. Thick. I could tell that. Feels good.” He squeezed again, illustratively, and Enjolras made a helpless noise.

He bit his lip a moment later, but it was too late. Grantaire had him in the palm of his hand, and he knew it. 

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Want more? If I popped this button here – Yeah, like that. Wish you’d gone commando, huh?”

“You’re disgusting,” Enjolras said, and bucked his hips against the heel of Grantaire’s hand. The thin cotton of his briefs was a last layer between them. Did it count as a handjob if it wasn’t skin-to-skin? It felt, fuck – He closed his eyes again, and Grantaire pulled his hand out of his unbuttoned jeans. 

“Nope.”

“What?”

“This time you’re going to look at me while I get you off. I was going to suck you, but I changed my mind. You’re good for it, anyway.” 

“If you’re trying to make me beg, like you did,” Enjolras said coldly, despite the ache in his balls and the regret pulsing between his legs, “you’re delusional. You’re the last person I’d ask for anything.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Grantaire said. His mouth twisted. “I can’t imagine you begging anyone for anything. You’d rather break – but you’d never do that, either. Not you. So, no, I’m not going to make you beg. It’s up to you. You can go ahead, join the others for drinks with a hard-on, pretend it’s not there, blue-ball yourself all night or go jerk off in the Corinthe bathroom or the back alley – I’ve done it – or you can come back here and I can shove your knickers out of the way and get you off.”

Grantaire was disgusting. Disgusting and crude and vulgar, and Enjolras had always known that about him and always hated it. He hated the way his cock wanted Grantaire’s hand back on it now, the way Grantaire’s filthy words seemed to curl in his stomach. Had they always done that? It couldn’t be as new as it felt. Maybe he’d just been able to ignore it better.

He wasn’t going to beg.

“Your face is a picture,” Grantaire said, and shaped a rough rectangle with his fingers like he was going to frame Enjolras’s face in it. “Are you having a feeling, Apollo?”

“Shut up,” Enjolras said tightly, and put his hand on Grantaire’s arm. He gripped hard and jerked Grantaire forward so fast he stumbled, and was briefly pleased by it.

Then Grantaire’s hand shot back into his open jeans and squeezed his dick again; it didn’t even feel good, but Enjolras curved towards him helplessly, hips forward and shoulders back, and groaned. 

“Want a little help with that?”

“Fuck you,” Enjolras said, and fucked against the grip Grantaire had on him. His breath came shortly. Grantaire stopped merely holding his cock, and started to stroke, properly, knowingly, long hard strokes that were almost too rough to be pleasant, but not quite, faster, faster, until Enjolras shuddered against him and came damply in his palm, which left him full of regret and Grantaire’s hand full of spunk.

“I should –”

“No, nope, hold still,” Grantaire said, grip tightening around his sensitive dick in a way that was painful. He ground against Enjolras’s thigh, his own cock clearly palpable through two layers of denim, and Enjolras stood there stock-still and fixed his eyes over Grantaire’s shoulder and pretended that this wasn’t happening, he wasn’t standing there in the Musain letting Grantaire rub off against him like a mattress. 

His heavy breathing was almost panting, horribly reminiscent of the way Enjolras knew he’d sounded a moment ago himself, and he quivered with disgust, not desire, when Grantaire finally grunted and came against him, pressing his pelvic bone into his thigh and his cock into his hip. 

“There you go,” he said, opening his eyes. “No one’s blue-balling it tonight.”

“I think you need a tissue,” Enjolras said distantly, and Grantaire laughed. 

“A napkin’ll have to do. I’ll leave a fiver on the table for Louison as an apology. It was worth it.”

“Thank you.”

Sarcasm, but Grantaire laughed again, and kissed his forehead quickly, too fast for Enjolras to anticipate what he meant to do. His lips were warm, and their print lingered, wetly, after they were gone. “I don’t spend that kind of money on just anyone.” 

He let go of Enjolras’s dick, stepped away, and wiped his hands with a paper towel as promised. He left it screwed up on the table with the rest of the mess. Then he grimaced at the damp patch on his crotch.

Enjolras put his own cock away, carefully, and pulled up his zipper. He felt in control of himself again. If he washed his hands – and his forehead – “Are you still planning to come to the Corinthe?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“It’s really not. I won’t see you later, then.”

“Oh, you will,” Grantaire said. “Just not yet. Have a good time. Anytime you need your balls drained – ”

“I won’t call you,” Enjolras said, and left.


End file.
